steam. As one said, "Health maintenance is a big item in this town."
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Others, by virtue of personality or experience, delegated duties to subordinates. A few compared their current job stress favorably to previous occupationsuniversity administration was far more stressful, according to two. On the other hand, one declared that his previous work as a law enforcement hostage negotiator was less stressful than his PAS IG work:
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 | | At least in that job the issues were black and white with clear-cut goals and objectives. Now the stresses are more fatiguing, there are many more influences and ramifications and other government agencies to consult with. I cannot make a decision without doing it in a committee, it's not just based on objective factors and the best available information. Now decision making is a mental and diplomatic exercise more than anything else.
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Some spoke of "the difficulty and enormity of the job, the long hours, the amount of material to be read and absorbed." Said another, "There are more successes and more frustrations in this job. There's a higher level of work, responsibility, exposure, and visibility."
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The EPA's Fisher echoed Selin: "It's a high-stress job due to the weightiness of the decisions made, the number of controversial issues, the amount of interaction with the media and Congress, the complexity of the issues, and the personalities to deal with at EPA."
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Said one whose job was listed in the
Prune Book's
"100 Toughest Jobs," "My stress level has been
very
high from Day One. The goal of most PASs by the end of the job is to leave one's job and get out of town with as few scars as possible." Others spoke of how they "always" felt under high-level stress. Another, noting these very high levels of stress among PASs, attributed it to interest group pressure, Congress, self-imposed stress, and stress resulting from attempts to change things in a context in which ''the status quo is the overriding influence in this town," a city of, as President Kennedy quipped, "Southern efficiency and Northern charm."
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"Working for the government is akin to intellectual strip mining," one PAS's friend told him, but, he thought, "the intellect was the last thing it strips. Your energy is the first thing government strips. It doesn't actually use your intellectthere's too much to do, too much to read, too much preparation required" to make good use of one's intellect. Often he read material on the way to a meeting at which he had to make major financial decisions. He was very frustrated that "too much is decided on too little information."
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